Venäjä-Ukrainan sodan oikeuttaminen historian kautta: instrumentalistinen analyysi Putinin viestinnästä, 2021–2024

This thesis examines how Russia’s president Vladimir Putin used and instrumentalized history to justify the war in Ukraine in his three major communications between 2021 and 2024. Examined communications were 2021 essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, 2022 television speech “Address concerning the events in Ukraine”, and 2024 interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson “The Vladimir Putin Interview”. The thesis used instrumentalist theory of the politics of history as its theoretical framework and historical framing analysis as its method to analyze Putin’s communications. In terms of results, the thesis established how Putin used historical past to construct a usable narrative as an instrumentalist tool to legitimize the war across the three examined communications: invoking deep historical past to frame a unity between Russians and Ukrainians, claiming that modern Ukraine was a Bolshevik creation, denying Ukraine’s and Ukrainians’ own agency, and framing disunity between Russia and Ukraine as a result of the foreign interference. Other historical events were used or excluded in his communications based on what was useful for the argumentation in that context. On the other hand, certain historical events that would have worked as a counterargument to Putin’s framing were fully absent. 2021 essay’s main task was legitimation of his claimed historical narrative, and used scholarly register and covering wide historical time period in detail to boost his credibility. 2022 address’s main task was preparing Russian audience for a war mobilization, due to which the register shifted towards grievance, and the historical coverage shifted from the deep historical past to a more contemporary history and to potential imminent threats. 2024 interview’s main task was to persuade international audience, especially conservative Trump-supporting Americans. Interview adopted a pedagogical register and restored deep historical past into the argumentation and added arguments that were geared for the American Trump-supporting audience. Overall, while the selection and presentation of historical events varied from one communication to another, certain topics were systematically excluded, and the main foundational themes were present in all three communications and served similar political tasks in all of them, consistent with what the instrumentalist framework would expect. The thesis shows how Putin recalibrates the same historical themes for each audience and purpose while maintaining their war-justifying functions.